Chitrabani is a professional social communication centre set up in 1970 as an extension service of St Xavier’s College, Kolkata. Subsequently, it was registered under the West Bengal Societies Registration Act and is recognised by the State Government as a voluntary educational institution in the field of social communication. It offers specialized, short-term certificate courses to aspiring media professionals, community workers and educators. It also provides facilities for sound recording, shooting, editing and dubbing of films, besides offering research facilities for scholars and students. “Though we have trained hundreds of men and women in different branches of cinema technique, we found that many of them cannot get into the field despite their brilliance. The other block is that training institutes and film/media industry run along parallel lines, having few bridges to link them. These two realizations motivated us to enter into film production,” says Father PJ Joseph, Director, Chitrabani and co-director of Chitrabani’s first feature film in Bengali, Mullick Bari.
 “Mullick
Bari is a mainstream film and it is for commercial
release. It has social messages too. However,
I do not want to label it as a commercial or an
art film because there is widespread misconception
about this labeling. When a film does well at
the box office, it is considered ‘commercial’
and when it does not, we call it an ‘art’
film,” is Father Joseph’s comment.
Though the initiative was entirely Father Joseph’s,
the decision was a collective one based on inputs
received from students, teachers and media professionals.
It is part of Chitrabani’s on-going research
towards contributing something more to the film
industry rather than just technically competent
graduates and diploma holders.
“Once we decided to make a full-length feature film in Bengali, we put our heads together to pick stories and arrived at a shortlist of a dozen with freshness, creativity and visual impact as the main criteria. The concept is inspired by Hrishikesh Mukherjee’s directorial debut film Musafir (1957) that wove in three separate stories of people moving in and out of a single house as tenants. The three stories featured some of the top actors of the time such as Dilip Kumar, Suchitra Sen, Kishore Kumar and Usha Kiron with lovely music. It is the only film where Dilip Kumar has lent his voice to his song. Mullick Bari is the name of a house in Kolkata. It is our humble tribute to the memory of Hrishikesh Mukherjee. There is a landlady and a broker who link the three stories of the film. There are three stories in this film – a comedy, a thriller and a romantic comedy. Let me leave the rest to the film critics,” says Father Joseph.
Anirban Chakraborty, Ashis Bhowmik and Biswajeet Mukherjee have jointly authored the story and scrip while Anirban is directing the film with Father Joseph. It is the story of characters who come to stay at Mullick Bari, most of them young people with their dreams, aspirations, frustrations and their quest for love or for the ones they have lost in the journey of life. Some characters are real while some are imaginary and exist only in the dreams and fantasies within the story. The three stories proceed, progress and culminate along different points of the continuum. One of them is a metaphysical romance. One is a brother’s search for his lost sister and the third weaves in a romantic comedy of errors. The film has a huge cast drawn generously from Bengali cinema and television. Supriya Devi, Sabyasachi Chakraborty, Kharaj Mukherjee, Rishii Kaushik, Koyel Das, Kanchan Mullick, Biswanath Basu, , Chandan Sen, Samir Ranjan Biswas, Aloknanda Roy, Rittik Chakraborty, Rimjhim Mitra, Moumita Gupta, Pallavi Chatterjee, Bivu Bhattacharya, Sarnakamal, Pauli Dam and Arup Jaigirder are essaying the characters in Mullick Bari.
 “Like
any communication media, cinema educates, informs
and entertains its viewers. Ideologies are transmitted
subtly; values and cultural ethos are reinforced
or challenged through this medium. Cinema is the
medium of the people. It offers the common man
a delightful visual experience. I think cinema
education and cinema production complement each
other if placed in the right perspective. Possibly
today’s cinema requires a bit more of discipline
and academia needs a bit of glamour. I have no
intentions of diluting either the glamour of cinema
or the discipline of academia. My question is
- why can’t we have both? Why can’t
a film institute with a track record of nearly
forty years build a bridge between these two apparently
opposed idioms,” asks Father Joseph. Mullick
Bari, which is being produced under the banner
of Chitrabani Society, could perhaps be termed
a collective production effort by students with
a professional finesse. The professional angle
is in the acting cast while most of the students
are involved in the technical side such as story,
direction, casting, and technical assistance right
to post production. “For them, it is at
once a new experience and a challenge,”
Fr. Joseph elaborates.
Noted music director Chandan Roy Choudhury is
composing the music for the film. Siddhartha Dey
is photographing the film, Mrinal Bhattacharya
is doing the production design and Abhijit Banerjee
is sound designer. The producers are hoping for
an August release for Mullick Bari. The
film, funded by Chitrabani, is being done at a
shoestring budget of Rs.30-35 lakhs.
“A number of people from the film industry
are working out a strategy for distribution and
exhibition of the film. We are hopeful that
the film will receive a good response from the
public. We are trendsetters in a manner of speaking.
I guess that others may follow the lead and students
from other training institutes will soon ask themselves,
- ‘if Chitrabani can, why can’t we?’
When that happens, we will have achieved a new
way of looking at film-making on the one hand
and at the film industry on the other,”
Father Joseph sums up.
Shoma A Chatterji is a freelance journalist
who specialises in cinema and gender. She has
won the National Award for Best Writing on Cinema
twice.
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